How to Parse CSV data

Let’s say you’ve got a huge CSV-fomatted file and you want to pull a particular element out some other processing. In the past you might have read the file into Excel and used the text-to-column feature to parse the elements. This can be accomplished much quicker and easier in Powershell:

Technique 1: parse using the “split” function:
Here we will split the CSV elements from each line and output the 2nd element (remember that arrays start at zer so an index of  is the 2nd element)

#long version
get-contet myfile.csv|foreach {$_.split(",")[1]}
#short version
gc myfile.csv|% {$_.split(",")[1]}

Technique 2: parse with selection criteria
Here we want to exclude the header row from our CSV file:
Simply add the “where-object” cmdlet t to the pipeline and specify your selection critera

#long version
get-contet myfile.csv|where-object -notlike "*element1,element2*"|foreach {$_.split(",")[1]}
#short version
gc myfile.csv|? -notlike "*element1,element2*"|% {$_.split(",")[1]}

But wait, there’s more!

Technique 3: use import-csv:
Provided that your CSV data has a header row describing the content of each element, you can use the import-csv cmdlet

To see what the data elements (aka “properties”) are, use the get-member cmdlet

#long version
import-csv myfile.csv | get-member
#short version
ipcsv  myfile.csv | gm

Once you know which element you are looking for, use the select-object cmdlet

#long version
import-csv myfile.csv | select-object "element-2"
#short version
ipcsv myfile.csv | select "element-2"